When Murder Came to Murdock

The Stock Farmhouse

Source: John Ferak, used with permission

The two-story farmhouse near Murdock, Nebraska, was ominously quiet when Andrew Stock entered on the morning after Easter in 2006 to speak to his parents. They should have been doing chores by then for their thriving hay business. When he climbed the stairs, he found them. They’d been blasted with a shotgun.

Former Omaha World-Herald journalist John Ferak describes the crime scene and police response in Bloody Lies: A CSI Scandal in the Heartland. His coverage puts the reader right in the rooms where everything happens—including the bungled interrogation, the flawed investigative logic, and the tight CSI network that inadvertently enabled a fraud. This is no superficial true-crime rendering of a gory double homicide. It’s a painstaking account that both engages readers and teaches important lessons to law enforcement.

The double homicide made little sense. Wayne and Sharmon Stock, in their 50s, were popular in the small community. There was no evidence of forced entry, although a window was open with a screen removed. A witness reported seeing a tan car.

Among the items of evidence were shotgun ammo, a marijuana pipe, and a flashlight. A blood spatter “shadow” on one wall near the stairs revealed two offenders present. A gold ring picked up from the kitchen floor bore an inscription that matched no one in the family.

It appeared that someone upset with the Stocks had targeted them. This left few potential suspects. Neither the Patrol Investigator William Lambert nor the Cass County Sheriff’s Investigator Earl Schenck Jr. had experience with a homicide. After interviewing relatives, they focused on a nephew, Matt Livers, who had a history of conflict with the slain couple. The 28-year-old was immature and intellectually slow. After 11 hours of interrogation under stressful conditions, he eventually confessed.

The investigators should have done some research. People with a low IQ tend to provide false responses under pressure—especially after hours of it. But the officers wanted to close the case quickly.

They needed two perpetrators, so they pressured Livers to name an accomplice. He pulled one out of the air, making his cousin, Nick Sampson, a suspect. Nick’s brother owned a tan Ford Contour, which he’d cleaned on the morning of the murders. It all seemed to fit. Yet nothing linked the car to the bloody crime. Both young men had alibi witnesses, which were ignored.

Livers took a polygraph. The inexperienced administrator scored it incorrectly, claiming Livers had failed. Investigators threatened him with the death penalty. A confession was his only way out. It’s fascinating, if also horrifying, to read the excerpts. Even a layperson could spot the errors.

And while Livers confessed, he quickly recanted. He admitted to fabricating things to satisfy the interrogators. He’d supplied answers “just from, you know, basically fitting an answer to what you guys have been asking.” Other items he’d heard from relatives or the news.

The investigators needed physical evidence. Douglas County's crime lab commander Dave Kofoed was renowned for finding minute items of evidence, so he was given the task. He went over the Sampson car once more and found what they needed. Or did he? That’s what the second half of Ferak’s book explores. What happened, and how, is quite disturbing.

When evidence implicated two other suspects, Livers was pressured to include them. It’s an astonishing story of a bungled investigation, and I refer readers to the book for all the twists and turns. I was interested in the reports from two forensic psychologists, which I hadn't seen in other media accounts. The Cass County court invited Dr. Scott Bresler to evaluate Livers. He viewed the police files, conducted interviews, and performed assessments of his IQ, personality, and levels of deception, compliance, and suggestibility.

“By the time Bresler finished his work,” Ferak writes, “the distinguished Ohio psychiatrist understood why a terribly flawed and horribly incompetent police interrogation wrecked Matt’s self-confidence and left him stumbling and stammering as two angry investigators spoonfed him a confession that had more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese.” Livers had denied his involvement 139 times. His scores placed him in the borderline mentally retarded range, and he “had a strong tendency to make up information to fill in his lack of knowledge or memory gaps.” He also showed a strong tendency to comply under pressure.

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Bresler said the confession was coerced and false. The prosecutor was alarmed. He asked another psychologist, experienced with the Nebraska correctional system, for a second opinion. Confirmation of a false confession got the charges dropped.

Once the case was resolved, civil lawsuits began. Part of the settlement required Cass County sheriff’s investigators to undergo training on the interrogation of learning disabled or mentally ill suspects.

I’ve heard that former Washington, D.C. homicide detective Jim Trainem uses this case to demonstrate false confessions and cognitive errors that can derail good investigations. The Nebraska Law Enforcement Training Center in Grand Island likewise uses it to show officers how to recognize cognitive impairment in suspects. Among the problems was that Livers was not asked, prompt-free, to provide a retelling of the incident. In addition, the investigators ignored key items he’d omitted, such as the murder weapon’s location.

Humans are prone to filter things through our own perceptual sets, accepting whatever supports our biases and ignoring or minimizing counter-evidence. The highly touted gut instinct can lead investigators into error, but few are trained in what makes it unreliable. (I discuss similar cognitive errors in an earlier blog here.)

Ferak’s detailed account is well worth checking out. While recounting a surprisingly twisted case, he also offers a study in several noteworthy aspects of forensic psychology.